The World in Vogue: Society, with a little fashion thrown in

I raced to the nearest bookstore yesterday so I could finally get a glimpse of the newest Vogue tome, "The World in Vogue." This book has been sitting in my Amazon.com queue for months, patiently waiting for me to purchase it. November 17th marked the first day the book was available to the masses, though a cocktail party had been held for the two main collaborators, Hamish Bowles, European Editor at Large, and Alexandra Kotur, Style Director, on October 21st.

The 300-page book was an impressive effort, with photos from the magazine throughout the past six decades divided into different subjects like parties, places, models and muses, et cetera. If you are familiar with the magazine at all, chances are very high that you have already seen most of these photographs and read most of the featured articles. I definitely felt a sense of deja vu while flipping vigorously through the book.

The tone of this book was one of immense privilege and wealth, even more so than the magazine itself. Hamish Bowles made this clear during the introduction, though, taking the reader through the cycle of socialites who have graced Vogue's pages over the past one hundred years. Society is vital, he seemed to announce. Vital to life, important to fashion, central to Vogue.

After gazing through the book twice, I realized just how far removed from normal life everything the magazine portrays is. Lauren Davis's wedding to Andres Santo Domingo in Cartagena, with every socialite in tow; Plum Sykes's wedding to Toby Rollins at a family estate in Hertfordshire; Marina Rust and Aerin Lauder at palatial family homes; Valentino's mammoth home outside of Paris (which the reader should have become intimately acquainted with during the recent Valentino documentary); Truman Capote's Black and White balls; Babe Paley; Talitha Getty. The list goes on and on. It's not that I didn't enjoy reading about these glamorously over-the-top occasions. I just wondered if the emphasis on money, society, and privilege was too great in this book. Perhaps I missed something, but fashion itself seemed to be occluded.

A few months ago, some of my friends and I casually debated this notion that fashion and society are inextricably linked. Of course, of course, my friends said. You can't have one without the other, for that would be like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. At the time, I thought it was possible for high fashion to exist away from the world of high society and privilege. Now, I'm not so sure, and "The World in Vogue" made me all the more skeptical.

(** photo is from Vogue's website, www.style.com)